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Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

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Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#91

Post by scrollaway »

ska wrote: post #22
mjevans wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for no more adjustments, I don't care if that's UTC, nation wide 'Eastern', DST or not DST... just leave things the same all year. I've got a slight preference for everyone going UTC with no DST so that meetings and events are easier to schedule across the world. UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time and then uses DST to try and adj…

> UTC would be great if it weren't for how everyone wants to think of E.G. 8AM or 9AM or whatever as a common start time You mean people want to think about hours in a way that is useful to them where they live? Doesn't sound crazy. If everyone moved to UTC you wouldn't solve any real problems. Sure, everyone in New York could get used to their day starting at noon or whatever (to what benefit?) but if you wanted to…

Your day "starting" at 00:00 sounds a lot easier to reason about than the day starting at 08:00.

We did get used to the day starting at a weird time for no particular reason, and whenever you change jobs you'll get used to a slightly different time anyway.

I don't see how it's more useful the way it is now than any other way. This is like trying to justify that moving summer holidays by one day would disrupt everyone's way of thinking.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#93

Post by sunbear-lover »

Now that we have so many digital devices with GPS, why not go with continuous time zones? In the sense that if I move a certain distance to the east the time will change by a certain number of minutes, rather than chunking everything into hours. Seems much more accurate and useful.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#94

Post by axaxs »

nulbyte wrote: post #77
axaxs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally can't stay on DST. Florida already basically passed this, but it's held up in Congress as is tradition. Check out the Sunshine Protection Act. So, right now states can't stay on DST because federal law doesn't currently allow it. It does however allow permanent standard time, and petitioning for change of time zone. So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by swit…

> So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by switching to permanent Atlantic Standard Time. Maybe then they'd realize how silly this all is. States can't unilaterally adopt a different time zone. The boundaries are regulated by the feds.

Correct, but they can actually petition the feds to change their time zone. Whether or not that is likely, I don't know. It seems like something that would be very rare.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#95

Post by lutorm »

James_Henry wrote: post #85
benrbray wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally: in places like Michigan where it's dark by 6pm in the winters, darkness really has no correlation with sleeping hours. "2-DST" would actually make it easier for working people to align their sleep schedule with the daylight.

"2-DST" would make it so that people have to get up much earlier in the day though, right? From my experience, in places up north people find it harder to wake up early in the winter because the morning darkness (I'm sure the cold doesn't help either).

At high latitudes, it doesn't get light until so late that you will reasonably never wake up in daylight in the winter. But moving the light later would make it more likely that you can get out and actually see some light as opposed to going to work when it's dark and getting out when it's dark again.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#96

Post by lutorm »

ArlenBales wrote: post #19
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #10

Georgia is putting DST on the ballot this November. Voters will have a choice to stay with DST, going to standard time year around, or asking Congress for permission to stay on DST year around. My guess is none of the options will receive a majority vote but year around DST will get the plurality. Since that requires Congressional approval and the ballot referendum is non-binding, nothing will change as a result. Hav…

DST doesn't create more sunlight, but it absolutely creates more opportunities to get sunlight, allowing more time to enjoy outside activities after work. e.g. physical exercise. I commute to work everyday on my bicycle through a large city park, all year long, rain or shine, night or day. It's about 3.5 miles one way. I've been doing this for roughly 5 years. I personally look forward to DST just for warmer commute…

Are you saying you see this difference between the week before and the week after the DST transition? Because obviously there will be more activity outside in the evening in general when DST is observed, because that is in the summer. That would be the case even if there was no DST transition.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#97

Post by lutorm »

throwaway8451 wrote: post #69

DST is a very sensitive topic, so better use a throwaway ;) Here are examples what would happen if DST were abolished: If DST ('+1') is adopted permanently, the main effects will be during winter in that sunrise is now an hour later (bad) and sunset as well (which is ok). An example for Berlin, in December: if sunrise used to be at 8:00 (8 a.m.) normal time it is now an hour later at 9:00 (a.m.) (spend some time furt…

This is specific to the latitude of Berlin, though. I grew up in northern Sweden and in the winter there is no amount of clock adjustment that will make you avoid your morning activities being in the dark. But if you did use DST permanently, you'd at least have a slightly better chance of seeing some light when you get out of school or work.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#98

Post by Izkata »

J-dawg wrote: post #8
northernjames wrote: post #6

Accident risk has been shown to decrease by the same amount when the time switches in the fall. It's a wash.

I thought that as well, but this study appears not to have found that > and there were no effects of the fall-back transition to Standard Time (ST) on MVA risk EDIT: It seems our assumption was correct, at least for the UK: > There is substantial evidence that fewer people would be killed and seriously injured on Great Britain’s roads if this country were to put the clocks forward by one hour throughout the year. The…

First thought without even trying to compare the DST shift directly to guess a reason: Comparing sunrise and sunset across the year, London to Chicago, London is slightly more extreme across the year.

London: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/london

Chicago: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/chicago

Assuming my co-workers are typical, workday also seems to end more like 5:30pm in London vs 5pm in the US.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#99

Post by gpvos »

dooom wrote: post #88
gpvos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static. The entire reason we have summer/winter time is that changing the time is easier than changing business hours.

Why would changing business hours be so complicated?

There are thousands of businesses involved. Also, work contracts.

Re: Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

#100

Post by nulbyte »

axaxs wrote: post #94
nulbyte wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I wish Georgia, Florida, et al would just give Congress a big middle finger by switching to permanent Atlantic Standard Time. Maybe then they'd realize how silly this all is. States can't unilaterally adopt a different time zone. The boundaries are regulated by the feds.

Correct, but they can actually petition the feds to change their time zone. Whether or not that is likely, I don't know. It seems like something that would be very rare.

They can, yes, but not much of a middle finger.
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